Post Production
Well I managed to get everything finished this week, which I am really happy about. There was definitely more than once where I thought I would have nothing to hand in as I wouldn't get anything finished. Alas, after several cans of energy drink, a lot of chocolate raisins and lots of cheering from the animation studio sidelines (haha!) I got it all done. It took me about 2 days to rotascope the 2D animation, but I wish I had done it earlier as its really shoddy. The original plan was to use drawn animation, and not rotascope however due to unforeseen circumstances, I did not have the man power to do it. I'm not great at animating myself, hence the reason I chose to rotascope instead. In hindsight I would have done it more accurately (animate on every frame, not 2's) and I would have gone over it an cleaned it all up. Anyhoo, after the rotascoping I started putting everything together. This involved one wasted day of me trying to fight with Toxic, trying to figure out why my rotascoping (a separate piece of rotascoping, over a moving figure in the live action footage, in order to replace it with a mask so it would look like the panda character was walking behind him, not just placed on top) wasn't working. However I managed to get that working after going home and coming back to the studio the next day with a clearer head, I had it done with in an hour. The problem I was having was that I was deleting and adding points on each keyframe which meant the computer essentially just got really confused and didn't know what point it was supposed to be following where. After that, I then rendered it out and put a reflection in the window of the first shot. That was fairly simple, it involved more masks over the windows and another render. Putting shadows on the panda was probably the most frustrating. I decided to do this in aftereffect, as I didn't realise you could do it in toxic. This took a good day or so, more head scratching and a lot of swearing. In the end I had to make the composition which was all 2D, 2 and a half D so I could then put a plane in and a light in order to cast the shadow. The main problem I was having was that the shadow didn't match up to the character, as I had animated the character walking away. This meant the character got smaller, and as I hadn't animated the light to move; the shadow didn't match up with the character. Eventually with some help from Olly, who told me to animate the plane instead of the light, it worked! So, after a long week and a lot of freak outs, I got it all done and I am proud as I essentially did it all on my own! I am not overly proud of the finished piece as it looks very rough and not as great as the others, but I did learn how Toxic works, a lot more about after effects and that having too much energy drink makes me go mental!
I will post the final thing as soon as vimeo converts it.
ciao
Well I managed to get everything finished this week, which I am really happy about. There was definitely more than once where I thought I would have nothing to hand in as I wouldn't get anything finished. Alas, after several cans of energy drink, a lot of chocolate raisins and lots of cheering from the animation studio sidelines (haha!) I got it all done. It took me about 2 days to rotascope the 2D animation, but I wish I had done it earlier as its really shoddy. The original plan was to use drawn animation, and not rotascope however due to unforeseen circumstances, I did not have the man power to do it. I'm not great at animating myself, hence the reason I chose to rotascope instead. In hindsight I would have done it more accurately (animate on every frame, not 2's) and I would have gone over it an cleaned it all up. Anyhoo, after the rotascoping I started putting everything together. This involved one wasted day of me trying to fight with Toxic, trying to figure out why my rotascoping (a separate piece of rotascoping, over a moving figure in the live action footage, in order to replace it with a mask so it would look like the panda character was walking behind him, not just placed on top) wasn't working. However I managed to get that working after going home and coming back to the studio the next day with a clearer head, I had it done with in an hour. The problem I was having was that I was deleting and adding points on each keyframe which meant the computer essentially just got really confused and didn't know what point it was supposed to be following where. After that, I then rendered it out and put a reflection in the window of the first shot. That was fairly simple, it involved more masks over the windows and another render. Putting shadows on the panda was probably the most frustrating. I decided to do this in aftereffect, as I didn't realise you could do it in toxic. This took a good day or so, more head scratching and a lot of swearing. In the end I had to make the composition which was all 2D, 2 and a half D so I could then put a plane in and a light in order to cast the shadow. The main problem I was having was that the shadow didn't match up to the character, as I had animated the character walking away. This meant the character got smaller, and as I hadn't animated the light to move; the shadow didn't match up with the character. Eventually with some help from Olly, who told me to animate the plane instead of the light, it worked! So, after a long week and a lot of freak outs, I got it all done and I am proud as I essentially did it all on my own! I am not overly proud of the finished piece as it looks very rough and not as great as the others, but I did learn how Toxic works, a lot more about after effects and that having too much energy drink makes me go mental!
I will post the final thing as soon as vimeo converts it.
ciao
